After the marathon effort that was my experience of the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2013 I have finally finished!
I made a version of Betty Draper’s brocade dress and I used a vintage pattern too. I’ve posted a bit about the details previously. For now here are the photos. In the sprint to the finish to get the dress done on time I am in need of a nap. I promise to give you all the details in a few days!
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Over the Easter weekend I finally made some progress on the dress I’m making for Julia Bobin’s Mad Men Dress Challenge. Ages ago I let you know that I was going to attempt to recreate Betty Draper’s cocktail from the season 4 poster.
I will be using this navy, teal and gold brocade that I bought of Etsy at the begging of last year. I’ll be making this dress using a vintage pattern – McCalls 6564 circa 1962. Last time I made this dress I made it out of a deep blue velvet and I loved it! I still wear it, but it is definitely a winter dress (we’ve been having quite the Indian Summer here in New Zealand).
So what have I actually done since we last touched on this topic? WELL ACTUALLY (she said a little too defensively) I made a muslin. I know – I never make muslins! I convinced myself to do it by thinking that I could use said muslin as the dress lining if there wasn’t too much to change. And as it turns out all I did was take 1cm off the shoulders and subsquently lower the neckline and the armholes to match.
If you look closely you’ll see that the dress has bust darts, plus two darts on either side at the front and another four on the back. It has quite a high neckline and a deep V-back. Do you know haw many tailors tacks that is? Approximately a million. However, I decided as it was a long weekend that I would diligently put them all in – I know – you’re all so proud of me.
Who else is doing Julia’s Mad Men Dress Challenge?
DID YOU SEE THAT JULIA BOBBIN IS HAVING ANOTHER MAD MEN DRESS CHALLENGE???
I’m sorry for yelling but this is pretty exciting! When Julia Bobbin had her first Mad Men Dress Challenge I was fairly new to this game (both sewing and blogging!) but now I’m up for the challenge! Julia has made some great Mad Men dress replicas that I’m super envious of like her Peggy Dress and her Joan Dress
So now I need to decide what I want to make… I don’t want it to be too costume-y if you know what I mean, so that I can wear the dress normally too. I originally thought of making a houndstooth office dress similar to this …
… but then I would need to buy a pattern too and right now I’m seriously stash (and pattern) busting. And then I saw this poster and I was sold!
But which dress you ask? And which fabric? BETTY’S
Will this look too costume-y? I’m so blinded by the pretty fabric! Advice/ opinions welcome!
Over the long weekend managed to whip up a skirt. I know – usually it takes me about a month to complete any piece of sewing – so yes I am quite pleased with myself.
Last week I blogged about this material (below). I had decided that I wanted to make a nice snuggly-warm, yet sophisticated, winter skirt. I thought with any luck this will look like a skirt from Mad Men. I’m not really sure if it did in the end but I’m happy with it all the same.
I decided to go with the Butterick 6662 pattern (above) as I thought a simple pattern would be best for a potentially bulky fabric like this wool & polyester blend. I went with view A so that the side split would make a potentially boring skirt a bit more interesting.
I only had 0.7 x 1.5 meters as I had bought the fabric on a whim from the end of roll basket at Global Fabrics in Wellington (my favourite shop EVER). This was a five piece pattern so it just fitted on the fabric, though was a bit of squish when it got to the waistband:
This pattern was pretty straight forward and the instructions were easy to follow. The only hiccup I had was naturally when I was putting the zipper in. The needle snapped in three places when I was sewing over a pin.
However, I got over that hurdle and carried on towards the finish line. Next, I hand over-casted the all the edges as they were fraying in my hands, my sister then measured the hem length for me to just above the knee, and lastly I hand stitched the hem up comme ca:
And here is the finished product:
Upon reflection this was one of the cheapest items I’ve sewn. The material was $9, the zipper was free (from Noeline’s stash), the pattern was $1 from the SPCA Op Shop and I already had the thread. $10 for a skirt isn’t bad!
Have you been thrifty recently?
Dresses & Me 